Management to John Aubry: Re:

Management To John Aubry: Re: recent merger -- reorganize with a team-based, virtual, matrix, network, or a combination approach? There are five overall approaches to organizational linkage under consideration after the proposed merger. The system currently under use is functional, hierarchical linking in which a manager links two or more parties at lower level, in a "chain of command" This was well-suited our earlier, simpler model of organization.

However, even though the new organization will have a great deal of overlap of in the skills sets and duties of employees, the additional complexity is likely not to be suited to such a clearly authoritative or military-like structure of command. Also better efforts should be made in pooling the resources of technicians and generalists in the new organization than before. Using liaisons to create linking teams across the organization or horizontal linkage would better bridge this potential gap of different backgrounds and orientations.

However, given that the merged groups of specialists will likely have different backgrounds and personal styles, to create a truly unified organization with a singular mission, using cross-unit links or merging the networks of both organizations might be more ideal, especially since the company must plan to operate out of different locations for some time. The teams should comprise people from different areas, both technical and general, who meet together create a truly organized entity.

True, a virtual team approach with fewer face-to-face meetings might be logistically easier, but it will not in the long-term create a cohesive organizational culture. Human resource staff is available at present to conduct team building exercises to create a greater sense of singular organizational culture, which would be ideal as soon as possible An even better solution than teams, virtual or otherwise, would be constructing a matrix organization, which would retain some of the functional structure currently under operation.

In this structure, every worker reports his or her functional manager as well as to a program manager. But although workers in different sub-specialties like technical employment might retain their loyalty to their functional areas, they would also have links to.